WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT??? Vice Presidents #27-29

By Philip Leo McCarron

Tuesday

May 15, 2018 at 5:39 PM

Category: Vice Presidents

To continue from last week … We left off with VP Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who wound up being the 26th president, from 1901 – 1909. He succeeded to the presidency when William McKinley was assassinated on Sept. 6, 1901, in Buffalo, NY (he actually died on Sept. 14). “Teddy” had no VP from 9/14/01 – March 4, 1905. On that day, his VP became …

27. … Charles Warren Fairbanks. He was inaugurated as Roosevelt’s VP. From Indiana, he balanced the ticket nicely. A Midwestern wise man to Roosevelt’s Northeastern elitist enthusiasm. Roosevelt was a Progressive; Fairbanks a Conservative. Roosevelt was loud, raucous, while Fairbanks was soft-spoken and discussed all things calmly. One journalist referred to the 1904 ticket as “the Hot Tamale and the Indiana Icicle.” Despite this, friends said he was a friendly, genial fellow. After surviving an assassination attempt on his own life (the suspect was caught before firing a shot), Fairbanks considered a presidential run in 1908, but gave up due to lack of support. Fairbanks died on June 14, 1918, at the age of 66.

28. The next president after Roosevelt was William Howard Taft. His VP started their relationship with this quote: “You will have to act on your own account. I am to be vice president and acting as a messenger boy is not part of the duties as vice president.” His name was James Schoolcraft Sherman, and he had a bit of an attitude, to say the least. (His marble bust in the Capitol is the only vice-presidential bust with eyeglasses. Apparently, he thought he wouldn’t be recognized without them. As it turns out, very few people recognize him even wearing them!) He was constantly afraid of being confused with mid-19th century Senator John Sherman – brother of infamous Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. All the same, while serving in the House, his nickname was “Sunny Jim” because of his cheery disposition. From Utica, NY, he spent most of his life in politics. A man with his own ideas, a guy who ran and ran for various offices – and always almost made it. When elected, President Taft told Sherman, “I’m going to rely on you, Jim,” which prompted the rather bitter response quoted earlier. Suffering from the kidney ailment Bright’s disease, Sherman died, while still in office, on Oct. 30, 1912. He was 57.

29. After Sherman’s death, the office was vacant until March 4, 1913. It was then taken over by Thomas Riley Marshall. He served two terms as Woodrow Wilson’s VP, from 1913 to 1921. He was a man with an attitude. He publicly said that most of the jobs assigned to him in this role were “nameless” and “unremembered.” Born in Indiana on March 14, 1854, Marshall’s vice-presidency was – and still is – puzzling. Wilson went on record as calling Marshall a “small-caliber man,” and had objected to him being on the ticket in 1912 (things were done differently back then; presidential candidates didn’t get to pick their running-mates). Yet he kept him on for two terms. The president – himself an intellectual (the only U.S. president to have earned a Ph.D.) – paid no attention to him. Marshall thus attended no Cabinet meetings, never spoke, never offered suggestions. He made himself a nonentity. When Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke in 1919, his non-involvement in the administration became a real national crisis. Until the 25th amendment was adopted in 1967, Wilson’s inability to properly perform the duties of the Executive were not even addressed by the Constitution. What followed was what many scholars and historians consider the biggest scam ever perpetuated over the American people. Wilson hadn’t died; therefore – regardless of his competency as president – he was still president. VP Marshall was no match for the will of the president’s wife, Edith, who – it is claimed – ran the country in her husband’s stead (meaning, of course, that the U.S. has already had its first woman president). VP Marshall – not kept in the loop, naturally – simply played along. In 1922, the next president, Warren G. Harding, was elected. Marshall died on June 1, 1925, aged 71.